Fury at Patten’s ‘uncouth abuse’

NO ONE embodies the great and good of the Establishment more convincingly than Lord Patten, the wellnourished Chancellor of Oxford University and former Chairman of the BBC.

But his seat in the Lords and his web of connections have failed to insulate him from an angry demand that he should stand down, with immediate effect, from his role as patron of his old private Roman Catholic day school, St Benedict’s in Ealing, because of his ‘uncouth abuse’ of Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg.

John Burke, who was also at £16,845-a-year St Benedict’s, has written to the school, demanding that action is taken.

‘I was absolutely disgusted with what he said,’ says Burke, referring to Patten’s claim that Rees-Mogg was a ‘caricature’ with no idea about trade deals who had been ‘taken over by his own image’.

‘This is uncouth abuse of a fellow Catholic,’ adds Burke, who draws attention to what he says is Patten’s unwillingness to engage in civilised debate.

‘Anybody with a Benedictine education would be expected to prove his case.’

St Benedict’s Old Boys, or Old Priorians as they are known, include comedian Julian Clary and former Labour MP Dennis MacShane. More recently the school was engulfed by a sex abuse scandal that resulted in the arrest and conviction of two monks. In response, Lord Carlile was commissioned to compile a report, the publication of which resulted in changes to the school’s governance,

During his days as the last Governor of Hong Kong — where his enthusiasm for guzzling his way through the colony’s restaurants earned him the name ‘Fatty Pang’ — Lord Patten,74, invited the young Rees-Mogg, whose father was a family friend, to stay at the Governor’s residence until he could find a flat of his own. Yesterday his Oxford office did not respond to a request for comment.

Burke is unimpressed. ‘He should resign,’ he tells me.